Gwen Lister

Advisory Board

Gwen Lister , a journalist for 30 years, founded The Namibian in 1985 during apartheid colonialism in the country. Lister was jailed twice, in 1984 under the Official Secrets Act, and in June 1988, when she was detained without trial and denied access to a lawyer. Authorities jailed her the second time in an attempt to force her to reveal the source of a secret document she had published, which proposed sweeping new powers for the police; she was four months pregnant at the time. Attacks on the newspaper and harassment of its staff culminated in an arson attack that destroyed the offices of The Namibian in October 1988. After independence in 1990, the newspaper editorial offices were damaged in a phosphorous grenade firebombing. In these and other bombings, The Namibian never missed an edition. In 1992, she was awarded a Committee to Protect Journalists' International Press Freedom Award, in 1996 she was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard and in 2000, Lister was named one of 50 World Press Freedom Heroes of the last half century by the International Press Institute.

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